


Out Cold

by onward_came_the_meteors



Series: October 2020 Prompts [21]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Hurt Bruce Banner, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, One Shot, POV Third Person, Post-Avengers (2012), Protective Tony Stark, Team Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:28:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27133876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onward_came_the_meteors/pseuds/onward_came_the_meteors
Summary: Avenging isn't a seasonal activity.
Relationships: Bruce Banner & Avengers Team, Bruce Banner & Tony Stark, Bruce Banner/Tony Stark
Series: October 2020 Prompts [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947679
Comments: 4
Kudos: 65





	Out Cold

**Author's Note:**

> Day 21, for the prompt "hypothermia"

The snowstorm was relentless.

Howling winds and snow pouring down in drifts, everything hidden beneath layer upon layer of blurry, blinding, white. The landscape was utterly deserted; just a vast emptiness that stretched off into every direction, its true enormity disguised by the snow blowing in a thick, endless, haze.

Everything white as far as the eye could see.

Except for the green shape stumbling its way through the snow, that is.

The Hulk squinted up at the sky, snowflakes catching on huge lashes and quickly melting into trickles of ice water that froze again halfway down a green cheek. The sky was just as indistinguishable from the ground, from the air, from everywhere that was essentially the same in the midst of a blizzard. A blizzard that didn’t seem like it would ever be on its way to stopping.

He opened his mouth in a roar that was immediately ripped away by the wind and clenched his fists at his sides. He stomped forward, but the sheer force of the wind made even a being his size stagger, and he ended up turning in a confused circle.

There was nothing.

No buildings.

No team.

No shelter.

Nothing to smash.

Just endless, unforgiving, snow—and no way out of it.

There was nothing else to do but keep moving, on and on through the blinding white, even though it didn’t seem to be getting him anywhere at all. And when he couldn’t run anymore, he walked, and even that gradually slowed and slowed and slowed until it was just one foot dragging in front of the other, buried deep in snowdrift after snowdrift as his fists unclenched and reached up to shield his face from the slicing wind.

The Hulk growled, low in his throat, but the sound was just a whisper in the howling storm.

Something was seeming to unspool deep inside him: the tiniest of tugs that would usually have been only too easy to shrug off.

But the storm was stronger, and it shoved him; and it was only too easy to fall, down and down and down until—

His hand flailed out in front of him, reaching into the empty whiteness until his fingers began to shrink, the color leaching out of them as the snow rose up higher around his legs, and he let out a strangled roar that turned into a gasp as Bruce Banner nearly fell face-first into the snowbank in front of him.

Bruce blinked. It was harder than it should have been—his eyelids seemed frozen open, stuck with snowflakes and ice.

Everything was white. As far as he could see, in any direction.

Nothing else.

“Guys?’ he tried to yell, but it came out in a stuttered whisper as his teeth chattered too hard for him to form the words. His arms automatically came up and wrapped around his chest, but there was nothing but the shreds of his last pair of pants protecting him from the storm.

His feet sank almost knee-deep in the snow as he tried to take a step.

“Guys,” Bruce whispered again, a shiver wracking through his body, but there was no answer.

* * *

Tony mentally congratulated himself on his foresight—fixing the Iron Man suits to have a greater tolerance for the cold had been one of the first things he’d done back when he was first creating them. And, man, was it coming in handy now.

The team had been out in the blizzard for the better part of the morning (because superheroes didn’t get to sleep in, everyone knew that), fighting surprisingly well even as the temperatures dropped and the wind picked up until they could hardly see five feet in front of them. Even now that the mission was over, the storm hadn’t slowed one bit, and he wasn’t sure he would even be able to see the other Avengers if his display hadn’t been dialed up beyond all belief.

Tony picked himself up from under the tree (because apparently, there was something about Iron Man that made their enemies want to throw him into trees), shaking snow off the top of his helmet with a little back-and-forth whirring sound, and walked over to meet them.

Their little lineup was looking slightly different than usual, the bright spandex uniforms hidden beneath layers of bulky winter gear. He felt a stab of disappointment as he noticed Steve was also in plain black and not the walking flag he usually was, but consoled himself with the thick red gloves covering Steve’s hands.

Thor… well, he wasn’t positive Thor actually realized they were in a blizzard, given that it hadn’t put a single hitch into his attacks and he wasn’t wearing anything over his usual armor and cape. Tony decided to put “weird alien physiology” into _that_ checkbox and leave it alone.

Both Natasha and Clint were equally bundled up with only their faces peeking out. Natasha had seemed annoyed at first, given the lack of freedom of movement, but Clint was apparently fine with it—seeing as how he was currently sticking out his tongue to catch snowflakes. When he spotted Tony’s raised eyebrows, he gave a cheeky grin.

“Tony.” Steve nodded at him as Tony reached the rest of the group. One hand was holding the shield, as always, but the other was shoved deep in his coat pocket. “Alright, we’d better get back to the jet; it looks like we’ve done our job here and this storm’s only gonna get worse.”

As though to punctuate his words, the wind howled loudly.

“Excellent plan,” Tony said. He made a show of scanning the little circle of Avengers. “One flaw: does anyone else feel like we’re missing someone? Could’ve sworn there were six of us.”

“I don’t think he transformed back yet,” Natasha said from under her coat. Her hood was slipping off in the wind, revealing tangled curls coated in snowflakes. 

“He’s smart,” Clint said under his breath. “I’m freezing my ass off out here.”

“I could go and look for him,” Thor offered, already slinging his hammer out from the loop in his belt and preparing to send it—and himself—swinging through the air. Tony suspected his eagerness was less out of an actual concern for where Bruce might’ve wandered off to and more of a thrill at the opportunity to spar off with a worthy opponent. 

(They already knew Thor’s standards for “worthy,” so they really shouldn’t have been surprised when he turned out to prefer matching up with the enormous green rage monster than participating in any of their team training activities).

Tony held up his hands, then realized that in the suit, he looked like he was going to fire his repulsor beams, and put them back down. “Please do not start with the storms again. We’re really—I think we’re good on storms here, thanks.”

“This one isn’t _my_ storm.”

“I know. Quit making more.”

Thor made a “hmmph” noise, but he did lower the hammer—and a good thing too, because the winds had already been starting to pick up, and Tony had been flung into enough trees for today. He wouldn’t want to exceed his quota.

Natasha reached up and shoved her hood back down just as it was about to fly backward completely, jostled by the motion of her peering down into the snow. “The wind will have blown away any footprints by now,” she said. At least _someone_ here could stay on topic. “Can’t we track him somehow once we get back to the jet?”

“Ideally, yeah,” Tony said. “Unfortunately, the big guy doesn’t really have much in the way of equipment to stick a tracker on—not that I’m not working on it, but nothing that’s gonna help us right this second.”

“You track us?” That was Steve, his eyes already narrowing.

Tony rolled his, even though he knew Steve couldn’t see him underneath the faceplate. “Calm down, Cap; you’re gonna have to get used to this kinda thing in the twenty-first century. Besides, you’ll thank me one day when you’re stranded out in the middle of nowhere.”

“Doubt it.” Steve gave his shield a suspicious look, but didn’t argue further. Which was a relief, because it was _really fucking cold_ out here (Tony might’ve been inside the suit, but he could still see the others shivering) and the chances of them resolving their argument in the next fifteen inutes was exactly zero.

“So tracking’s not an option; we’ll have to sweep the area the old-fashioned way,” Tony said. He stared out at the endless blizzard. “Hopefully he hasn’t wandered too far.”

Honestly, the Hulk should’ve been the _hardest_ for them to lose; he was eight feet tall and all that roaring wasn’t exactly inconspicuous. Tony could clearly remember flying around him smashing things up during the fight, ducking out of the way of those massive fists as Thor came up on the other side shooting lightning—and yet here they were.

“Good plan.” Natasha nodded. “What do you say we do it from _inside_ the jet?” She jerked a gloved thumb behind her, where the dark shape of the quinjet was barely visible beneath the clouds of snow that had already enveloped it. Tony caught Steve frowning at it and wondered if it brought back bad memories.

“Seconded,” Clint said immediately.

They walked over to the quinjet, five bundled shapes struggling against the snow and the wind. Tony ended up at the back, watching Thor press the button to lower the door and the rest of them gratefully traipsing inside. It was odd how much fewer of them there seemed to be when only one person was missing.

_The big guy’s invulnerable, though. He shrugs off repulsor blasts like they’re nothing; surely he’ll be fine in a snowstorm._

_And he’s always a little wayward after a fight. He’ll come back eventually._

As Tony stepped into the quinjet, though, he kept his helmet up. There was no reason to let the others see the worry in his expression.

* * *

After a few minutes (he didn’t know how long, he was a little afraid to know how long) of stumbling around in the snow, Bruce had determined two things.

One, he was completely alone.

And two, this storm didn’t seem like it was going to slow down anytime soon.

Neither of those things boded well for the other, and Bruce wrapped his arms tighter around himself in a valiant but hopeless attempt to conserve body heat. He tended to run warmer ever since the accident—just a little side effect of getting blasted with dangerous amounts of radiation—and while that had certainly helped him when he was on the run and the closest available shelter might’ve been literally under a bridge, it wasn’t doing much now that he was in the middle of a blizzard.

In the middle of a blizzard and almost completely naked. That was probably an important part of it. Part of why he’d stopped feeling his hands and feet a while ago, and now the numbness was spreading up through his limbs. Part of why his breaths were rattling out in harsh, visible, puffs that were instantly blown away by the wind. Part of why all of his remaining energy was being used up in his constant shivering.

Usually, when he came back, the team would be there to offer clothes or a blanket or something; or at least one of them would be. Steve calling over the coms for the quinjet to park “over here, Tony, I found Banner;” Natasha crouching a few feet away and waiting for him to come back to himself; Clint unceremoniously tossing a hoodie down into whatever pit of rubble he’d managed to land in this time; Thor offering a hand and pulling him to his feet with such unexpected force it made his head spin; Tony out of the suit and already next to him when he opened his eyes, so close Bruce knew he hadn’t even waited until he’d transformed… yeah, it had been a while since he’d woken up alone.

As another shiver wracked his body and he tucked closer into himself, he decided he didn’t much care for it.

_Look at me. Couple months with a roof over my head and suddenly I can’t handle a little weather—_

His thoughts were interrupted as he tripped and sank into a patch of ground that had seemed solid, but was really just a couple layers of snow covering up an icy puddle. Freezing water now soaked his legs up to the knee, sending a jolt to his brain that had him completely motionless for a half second before he shook his head—snowflakes flying—and jumped back out.

_Cold. Coldcoldcoldcoldcoldcold._

He let out a shuddering breath and took another sweeping glance around the landscape. Nothing had changed, of course; he still couldn’t see anything around him but swirling wind and snow. And as frozen as his ears were, he was still pretty sure he’d be able to hear the sound of an approaching quinjet coming to land.

_They’d come and find me, wouldn’t they? Even if they don’t know where I am. They would. Tony would._

And because his brain never let him overlook the worst-case scenario, that thought was immediately followed by _unless something happened to them…_

Bruce mentally cursed his own stupid—well, he wavered back and forth on whether or not he should call it a “power.” Sometimes it felt like having a dangerous condition, sometimes a really prickly roommate, and sometimes… yeah, like a curse. Because he was getting better now, he was actively _going into_ risky situations because he was an _Avenger_ and he was _helping people_ and using this thing for _good_ —and he still woke up afterwards in a panic, because he never knew what had _happened_ and that scale could so swing wildly on any given day that it was laughable. And usually the others were there to fill him in—even if Tony tended to gloss over some of it and Clint’s responses were never longer than two words—but not when the Hulk insisted on running off into the middle of _fucking nowhere._

There was a growl from somewhere in the back of his head.

_Yeah, that’s right. I’m talking to you._

Bruce trudged another few steps through the snow. 

_You could at least help me out here, you know._ Not that he really wanted to transform again or anything, but his entire body was numb and there were ice crystals in his hair.

Silence.

_Great._

He squinted up at the sky and then hurriedly back down again as a particularly strong gust of wind sliced against his face. His legs were still moving, but he had to look down to make sure.

_Fine. I’ll find my own way back._

Bruce dug his fingers into his sides experimentally—he felt nothing; he might as well have been carved out of ice at this point—before letting out a sigh that was instantly torn away and starting to walk again through the piled snowdrifts. He could do it. He could find the team, or at least get close enough for them to find him. He could locate the quinjet somewhere in this storm and wait in its warmth for the others to return from the fight, if they were still fighting. He could…

_God, it’s cold._

* * *

“JARVIS, scan for life forms.” Tony was standing up next to the pilot seat with his hands moving over the controls, but at JARVIS’s “Scanning now, sir,” he relaxed and slumped down into the chair.

The rest of the team was unwrapping themselves from their winter gear, letting it drop to the floor as they crashed in various areas around the quinjet. Natasha was lying on her side across a row of seats and peeling wet socks off her feet, while Thor was wiping melting snow out of his hair and Clint was upside down in another seat untying his boots with a leg stretched out above him.

As for Steve, he was lurking right over Tony’s shoulder, and Tony really wished he wouldn’t do that, but just then Steve started talking.

“Any luck?”

Tony’s attention zipped back to Bruce (well, it was always on Bruce, at least a little) and looked down at the blinking screens on the instrument panel. “No sign yet, but it’s a big area.”

“This would be faster if we could split up!” Thor called from behind them.

Tony felt the shadow at his shoulder vanish as Steve turned around to answer.

“Maybe we could’ve done that if we’d finished the fight earlier, but now that the storm’s really picking up I don’t want to take any chances.”

“Yeah, I don’t know if S.H.I.E.L.D. health insurance’ll cover you getting defrosted a second time,” Tony said. He glanced out the windows, which were almost solid white; and the wind was still knocking them back and forth as they glided through the storm.

Steve rubbed a hand across his forehead, then paused and pointed to something on the screen. “What’s that?”

Tony followed his gaze to a tiny blip they were passing over. “A… pond?”

“Oh.”

Both of them stared out the window as the storm continued to rage.

* * *

Bruce used to be a normal guy. Then he exposed himself to unprecedented levels of gamma rays and became a nearly indestructible force of primal rage, and “normal” fell out of his vocabulary completely.

But even his body had its limits.

He had been walking for what felt like hours (it wasn’t hours, it couldn’t have been hours, he couldn’t still be moving if it had been hours), and now he had just stopped. Stopped, sunken down in snow to his shins, the last vestiges of energy drained out of him from the transformation and the fight and the relentless, ever-pressing _cold._

He frowned down at himself, shivering violently, at the legs that refused to move. _Come on. Move it._

And they did, but it was only for his knees to give out as he sank down in the snow, his hands coming out weakly to catch himself only to be doused in icy cold. 

His eyelids were slowly blinking shut, and he thought dimly that it wasn’t a good idea to go to sleep right now… not when he was so exposed and it was so bitterly cold… that was bad for some reason. Right?

Besides, he had to… had to keep moving. Find something. Someone.

Where was he?

He couldn’t feel anything.

Couldn’t feel anything but the heaviness, the unbearable heaviness that weighed him down until snow brushed against his cheek.

He just wanted to close his eyes. 

Just for a few seconds.

That wouldn’t hurt.

* * *

Tony finally admitted to himself that he was starting to get worried. He hadn’t been worried at first, when he’d noticed that one person was missing from their superpowered team-up, and he hadn’t been worried fifteen minutes later, when they hadn’t spotted anything large and green headed their way but surely he’ll be here soon enough, right?

But now it had been almost an hour, and Tony was starting to get worried.

The others were too, even though most of them weren’t saying anything; just by the way Thor hadn’t stopped pacing since they’d taken off and Clint’s head kept snapping back to the windows every time there was a roar (of wind, it was always the wind) like he actually expected to see anything in this blinding storm and Steve was poring over the readings with a surprising amount of intensity given how there was no way he was able to understand half of it—

—and finally Natasha lifted her head from where it had been braced on top of her folded hands, elbows on her knees, and said, “Steve, we should split up.”

Tony spun around in his chair to see the Cap’s reaction, only to find that Steve had immediately turned to him for _his_ reaction. That was new. _But appreciated._

The two of them held each other’s gazes in silence for a moment before they both started speaking at the same time.

“Listen, it’s been a while, we don’t know what could’ve happened—screw it, I’m getting the suit—” Tony started.

“I think it’s been long enough, he’s clearly not coming back on his own and I don’t like the look of—yeah, get the suit—” Steve said at once.

There was a beat as Tony pretended not to see Natasha’s raised eyebrows and he leaned down and flicked the switch for his suit to expand from where he’d collapsed it into suitcase form.

Thor was already standing up and walking toward the quinjet door. “I’ll take that direction, shall I?”

Before anyone could even open their mouths to argue (not that Tony wanted to argue, in fact, he wa very much in favor of the extremely powerful godly legend going out to search for his—going out to search for Bruce), Thor was flying away out into the storm and both Clint and Natasha were shivering at the sudden burst of cold air the open door let in.

“Well, there he goes,” Tony muttered as the suit unfolded around him. Red and gold metal slid out to fit over his arms and legs, locking into place with a satisfying _click_. “Better get a move on before he starts thinking the rest of us don’t contribute around here.”

“Good luck,” Steve said. He was staring at the open door, but unfortunately, Captain America couldn’t fly. And parachutes would… not be a fantastic idea in this weather.

Tony strode over to the open door and peered out at the swirling snow. “JARVIS, autopilot the jet until I get back.”

“You know I can fly this thing too, right?” Clint asked.

The helmet snapped shut over his face. “Thanks, J!” 

Tony tumbled backward out the quinjet door, immediately turning on his flight systems and soaring off in the opposite direction from where Thor had gone.

Not that he could see Thor anymore; there wasn’t even the slightest hint of a little fluttering red cape in the dense snowfall.

He’d forgotten how bad the storm was until he got back out in it—and he wasn’t even _out in it_ out in it, holy shit, the big guy must have been freezing by now—the wind instantly threatening to blow him off course before he righted himself and shot away, scanning the drifts of white below for any speck of green.

It was a while later before he came across the remains of some trees that bore the telltale signs of smashing. He swooped lower in the sky, hovering a few feet above the ground, and if he zoomed in, he could just spot the last traces of huge footprints that were rapidly disappearing under the snow cover.

Tony switched on the coms. “I got something; sending coordinates now. Hawkeye, if you can’t locate these I’m changing your codename.” He turned them off again before he could get an answer.

He followed the footprints on and on and on through the endless piles of snow. Every time he thought he must’ve reached the end of it by _now_ , there would be yet another hill or dip in the landscape that pulled aside to reveal that, yes, the snow really did go on forever. God, he missed California.

The footprints continued until they abruptly shrank, a large scuffed-up crater marking the spot where the Hulk had apparently decided he’d had enough of winter weather.

That threw him for a loop. He didn’t think the big guy would _want_ to go back to Bruce, not so soon after a fight, not when conditions were… less than favorable.

 _Oh my god, he_ really _must be freezing._ He’d meant it as a joke, or the closest thing to it, a remark on how the Hulk’s radioactive blood acted as its own heater (he could attest to that after one mission in particular where it had been pouring rain and Tony had discovered that Hulk arms made very good pillows, to the amusement of Clint, Natasha, and Thor. Probably to Steve, too, but he’d still been in captain-mode at the time and didn’t show it) and that there was no way something like a snowstorm would knock him down for the count.

Tony was so wrapped up in these thoughts that he almost flew right past the huddled shape half-buried in a snowbank.

 _Oh shit. Oh shit oh shit oh_ shit.

He landed, quite a bit less gracefully than usual, and hurried as fast as he could over to Bruce, dropping down onto metal knees and peering at his face.

Bruce wasn’t unconscious—he didn’t _think_ so, anyway—but he definitely wasn’t awake either; his eyes fluttered closed and speckled with snowflakes that weren’t melting, shivering so hard Tony didn’t see how he could breathe.

“Hey.” Tony reached out to cup his head before realizing that, in the armor, that probably wouldn’t be the most comforting gesture. “Bruce? Talk to me, come on.”

Slowly, painfully slowly, Bruce’s head shifted to face Tony’s voice. His eyes were hazy and unfocused. 

“... Tony?” His voice was thready.

“Yeah. Yeah, it is, I’m so sorry we didn’t find you sooner, big guy,” Tony said. “Come on, we’re getting you someplace warm.” _And fast._

“Warm.” Bruce repeated the word like it was in a foreign language, and then his gaze drifted off and his head dropped against his chest.

Tony felt his heart give a jolt. “No, stop that. You gotta stay awake, come on, Bruce.”

But it was clear his teammate wasn’t listening, and Tony barely hesitated a moment before scooping him up—carefully, carefully, very carefully, because wasn’t there something about not moving people with hypothermia too fast?—and settling him in the arms of the Iron Man suit, taking off back to the jet.

He must’ve been flying faster than he’d thought—or the rest of the team was—because it seemed to take no time at all for the large dark shape of the quinjet to come looming out of the clouds. He soared up as high as he dared with Bruce’s limp form stil locked in his grip.

Clint’s voice crackled through the coms. “I got a sighting of an unidentified flying object heading for the front window. Gonna put on the windshield wipers and see if it goes away.”

“Barton, you better have that door open,” was Tony’s only response, and Clint must’ve heard the urgency in his voice because he immediately stopped joking and Tony was able to fly right in through the open door to land inside the jet.

Bruce shivered again at the sudden blast of warmth, but was still completely limp in Tony’s arms as Tony took a few steps further inside to let the door close behind them.

Natasha and Steve both jumped up from where they’d been clustered in the seats near a window and hurried over. Clint didn’t move, since he was in the pilot’s seat, but glanced over his shoulder and managed a quick wave.

“We brought extra clothes this time,” Natasha reported, wincing as she spotted Bruce in Tony’s arms.

“Finally.”

“You never remember either.”

“In my defense, he goes through them really fast,” Tony said with a shrug that would’ve been more effective if his hands hadn’t been full and he hadn’t been encased in a metal suit.

“How about we just get him _in_ the clothes?” Steve suggested. He reached out to take Bruce out of Tony’s arms, but Tony backed away.

Ignoring Steve’s incredulous look, Tony walked over and deposited Bruce gently onto a row of empty seats, where he immediately curled up into a tight ball. 

_So this is… worrying._

Bruce wasn’t breathing nearly as much as he should’ve been, his chest moving shallowly in and out. His skin was icy pale and soaked with melted snow—as were the ripped pieces of fabric around his legs that were all that remained of his pants.

Natasha emerged from where she’d been rifling around in a storage compartment and produced a small pile of extra post-Hulk clothes. Then on second thought she grabbed an extra sweatshirt—that was either Clint’s or one of the ones that Steve had bought before he learned how twenty-first-century clothing sizes worked—and added it to the top of the pile.

She stood back and let Tony get the clothes onto Bruce, who made a kind of sighing noise as he was wrapped up in them, but his eyes were still closed and he didn’t say a single word throughout the whole process.

Tony frowned once he stepped back and took a look at his handiwork. “We’ve gotta have something else in here.” He turned to Natasha, who shrugged.

“There might be some blankets in the overhead compartment,” Clint called from the pilot seat.

“Why would they be in there?”

“You designed this thing,” Natasha reminded him.

 _Great, now they’re tag-teaming me._ “I didn’t design a sleeping area in the cargo hold, and yet.”

“It’s comfy,” Clint protested. “And we get long missions sometimes.”

Tony opened his mouth, but Steve was already reaching up for the compartment in the ceiling (and oh, okay, he could just _reach_ up there, like with his arms) and pulling down a couple of blankets.

Said blankets were very quickly bundled around Bruce—who still didn’t react except to shiver more violently—and Steve looked at the last one in his hand before asking, “Anyone else?”

There was a unanimous shaking of heads. Steve gave them all a look, but wrapped the last blanket around Bruce anyway.

Tony was disentangling his leg from out of the suit just as the door lowered for the third time that afternoon, letting in another gust of cold air. “Hey, what gives—”

But Thor was there, stomping his feet to shake the snow off of his boots, his gaze moving instantly to Bruce’s motionless form on the seat. “You found our missing friend, then?”

“Yeah, keep your voice down,” Tony said under his breath as Bruce stirred the slightest bit under his layers of blankets. 

He caught Natasha stifling a laugh. “And what is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.” Natasha’s eyes were wide and innocent.

Thor was still frowning at Bruce. “Is his skin supposed to be that color?”

“Nope, that’s hypothermia.” Tony crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall.

“I see.” Thor nodded in a slow way—a way that suggested he did not, in fact, see—and continued. “On Asgard, when someone is suffering from the cold and we cannot get them back inside, it is recommended to warm them up with skin-to-skin contact.”

Steve nodded. “Yeah, we have that here, too—Tony?”

But Tony was already crawling over the top of the row of seats, squeezing himself in next to Bruce before he even really thought about what he was doing. It just seemed so natural: _he’s cold: warm him up._ The stares of every other member of the team regardless.

He cautiously touched Bruce’s shoulder, starting as a little at the ice cold of his skin under the blankets… but Bruce’s eyes finally slid open a crack.

“Hey,” he whispered sleepily.

“Hey,” Tony echoed. “How’re you feeling?”

“Cold…” Bruce frowned and made a shifting movement like he was going to get up, but that was quickly abandoned as another wave of exhaustion swept over him. “Where is everybody?”

Tony blinked. “They’re… right here?” 

Bruce followed his gaze, looking up right as Thor waved and Clint called “Hi” from the pilot seat. Natasha and Steve were in the same position, hovering like twin pillars against the opposite wall.

“Oh. I didn’t hear.”

“That’s okay.”

“How did—” Bruce shivered again. “How did the mission go?”

“Short story: we won. Long story: ask the captain over there.” Tony jerked his head in the direction he was pretty sure Steve was; he wasn’t taking his eyes away from Bruce.

Bruce made a muffled sound and buried his head further into the pile of blankets. Only his hair was poking out now, still dripping with melted snow and ice.

Steve’s voice came from behind them, surprisingly gentle. “We’ll be back at the tower soon, and then we can get you warmer. Hopefully before dark.”

Bruce’s head popped back out at that, startled into sudden wakefulness. “How long was I out?”

“We were looking for you for a while,” Tony said. “We couldn’t find you—I thought Blondie was gonna electrocute this whole jet.”

Thor made some kind of noise. “I was _concerned._ ”

“We all were,” Natasha put in.

Bruce gazed confusedly around at all of them before apparently deciding it would be a lot less work to settle back into the blankets. “Oh… thanks.”

“No problem.” Tony shifted, and gravity pushed him a little farther into Bruce’s side. He lowered his voice as Bruce looked over at him. “You know, I’m used to you turning green, but not so much you turning blue.”

Bruce made another muffled sound before—somewhat unexpectedly—rolling over completely so that he was pressed right up against Tony on the seat. Tony went still for a moment as Bruce’s head brushed against his chest and settled there. 

If the arc reactor had still been there, this position probably would’ve hurt, but now it was only an odd sort of pressure… not _bad_ , just a little… tingly. Especially with Bruce’s freezing cold skin.

Even so, he found himself holding as immobile as possible, like the slightest inhale might send the whole thing falling away.

“Is this okay?” Bruce asked, his voice quiet and marked with shivers. Tony could feel his breath puff against the fabric of his shirt. “You’re just… really warm…”

Tony didn’t doubt that, not with the heat that he could currently feel rising to his face as he realized just _how close_ the two of them were right now. Because of course he hadn’t designed wider seats. “I—I guess so. Um—” 

Oh, the others were _so_ laughing at him now.

“Sure, it’s okay,” he finally said, because it was, it really was—this was the most _okay_ thing that had happened all day. And yeah, that was a low bar, considering that they’d been fighting in a raging blizzard, but… 

Tony settled into Bruce, reaching out an arm to pull the pile of blankets closer and ending up just keeping it there on Bruce’s back. Bruce himself was curled up against his chest, the top of his head brushing below Tony’s chin and his hand gently wrapping around his side.

It was easy, this way, for both of them to warm up.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
